GIT-LFS-SMUDGE(1)

📦
version 3.8.1 · 17 versions
, in arch rolling, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

🌸 NAME 🌸

hiii bestie 💖 you're on the GIT-LFS-SMUDGE(1) manual page, and this is all about git-lfs-smudge — the Git smudge filter that converts pointer in blobs to the actual content. no cap, that's the whole name-and-purpose moment.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

git lfs smudge [<path>]
git lfs smudge --skip [<path>]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so here's the tea: it reads a Git LFS pointer file from standard input and writes the contents of the corresponding large file to standard output. if it needs to, it downloads the file's contents from the Git LFS endpoint. the <path> argument, if you provide it, is only used for a progress bar. that's it. purely aesthetic progress-bar behavior, iykyk.

smudge is typically run by Git's smudge filter, configured by the repository's Git attributes. main character energy, honestly.

in your Git configuration or in a .lfsconfig file, you may set either or both of lfs.fetchinclude and lfs.fetchexclude to comma-separated lists of paths. if lfs.fetchinclude is defined, Git LFS pointer files will only be replaced with the contents of the corresponding Git LFS object file if their path matches one in that list. and if lfs.fetchexclude is defined, Git LFS pointer files will only be replaced with the contents of the corresponding Git LFS object file if their path does not match one in that list. paths are matched using wildcard matching as per gitignore(5). Git LFS pointer files that are not replaced with the contents of their corresponding object files are simply copied to standard output without change. periodt 💅

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

without any options, git lfs smudge outputs the raw Git LFS content to standard output. default vibe.

  • -s, --skip — skip automatic downloading of objects on clone or pull. no auto-download, no drama.
  • GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE — disables the smudging process. for more, see git-lfs-config(5). 💖

💀 KNOWN BUGS 💀

on Windows, Git before 2.34.0 does not handle files in the working tree larger than 4 gigabytes. newer versions of Git, as well as Unix versions, are unaffected. so old Windows Git + huge files = not the moment 😭. newer Git and Unix are chilling.

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

part of the git-lfs(1) suite. slay ✨

that's the whole GIT-LFS-SMUDGE(1) page, bestie 🫶 the footer on this one didn't print a source/version or date—just the page name—so here's your cute sign-off instead 💖🎀

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